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Now we can finally develop the kind of robust missile defense program the ABM Treaty prohibited. We don’t have to limit ourselves to a single land-based site — or slow the speed of our interceptors, as we did for years — to avoid violating the agreement.
—Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, on the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty taking effect today.
Unless a U.S. federal court intervenes at the last minute (see GSN, June 12), the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty will take effect today, more than 30 years after the United States and Soviet Union signed the pact and exactly six months after U.S. President George W. Bush formally announced his intention to withdraw from it (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2001)...Full Story 
Jose Padilla, the U.S. citizen recently arrested for allegedly planning to detonate a “dirty bomb” within the United States, traveled to a Central Asian country in April to look for radioactive materials, Pakistani officials said today (see GSN, June 12)...Full Story
Activists and some U.S. legislators have said the Bush administration is moving too slowly to improve security at U.S. chemical plants, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, May 30)...Full Story
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Leaders of both houses of Congress are considering moving portions of the FBI and CIA into the proposed Homeland Security Department, a move U.S. President George W. Bush opposes, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, June 11).
The best way to prevent intelligence-sharing mistakes would be to put the head of the new department in charge of those who would collect the information, including those at the FBI and CIA, several Republicans and Democrats in Congress said yesterday. Such a move also could force the FBI and CIA to quicken efforts to change their focus to counterterrorism activities, supporters of the idea said. If nothing else, the heads of the FBI and CIA must explain why their agencies should not become part of the new department, according to congressional officials.
Both officials and employees at the FBI and CIA would probably oppose being moved into the new department, according to sources. Such a plan might delay Congress’s deadline for the new department and hinder efforts to restructure the two agencies, officials said.
Bush, who supports the idea of putting information analysis from the two agencies under the proposed department, is against the idea of shifting the agencies themselves, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said.
Bush believes that the FBI needs to remain primarily a law enforcement agency, aides said. They also said Bush believes that the CIA needs to remain a separate intelligence agency with responsibilities beyond homeland security.
“We are going to work with Congress as the president’s proposal moves through the Hill,” said Ridge spokesman Gordon Johndroe. “We think that once they take a look at these issues like we took a look at these issues, they will come to the same conclusion.”
Some FBI and CIA insiders also oppose the idea of breaking up the two agencies to move portions to the new department, according to the Post. Some FBI officials have said it would be better to move the entire bureau over to the proposed department rather than breaking it up.
Some law-enforcement officials are also wary about the idea of creating an agency that could be used for domestic spying, officials said.
“There is a real benefit to keeping the counterterrorism and domestic spying aspects housed in an agency that understands what it means to operate within the rule of law,” an official said. “It’s one of those things that sounds simple on its face, but it really isn’t” (VandeHei/Eggen, Washington Post, June 13).
Ridge Gathers Support and Questions
After meeting with more than 200 members of the House of Representatives Tuesday, Ridge said he encountered widespread support for creating the new department. Many House members, however, also had questions about specific details of the plan, he said.
“The appreciation on both sides of the aisle for the job Governor Ridge has done was unanimous, even among Democrats,” said Representative Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.). “I can feel it in the air that both parties will come together on this and hammer this out. But I’ve got a weapons plant in my district, at Oak Ridge, and I’ve got some concerns about how it will be affected, so I don’t want us to rush things and make mistakes.”
Even some White House supporters in the House said the idea needs to be questioned and put through congressional procedure.
“I don’t think if you offer an amendment that means you’re disagreeing with a popular president or being unpatriotic,” said Representative J. C. Watts (R-Okla.). “It needs a very thoughtful process as we go through this thing.”
It is the amount that is spent on homeland security efforts, not its organization, that was what truly mattered, said Representative David Obey (D-Wis.).
“You don’t kill terrorists just by moving boxes on an organization chart,” Obey said. “You also need to back up whatever changes you make with adequate resources” (David Firestone, New York Times, June 13).
After the meeting with Ridge, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) agreed to form a special committee to handle the new department proposal, according to a congressional aide. The panel would be made up of six Republicans and five Democrats, the aide said.
House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) is the frontrunner to head the special committee, according to the Associated Press. Under the plan, the committee would break up the administration’s proposal and apportion it to existing House committees for deliberations with a deadline for reporting back to the special committee (Associated Press/New York Times, June 13).
After months of delay due to disagreements among lawmakers, the U.S. Senate may take up legislation today to provide federal aid for terrorism insurance. Senate Democratic and Republican leaders reached an agreement yesterday to allow debate on the bill (see GSN, June 6).
Many reinsurance and insurance companies have refused to offer terrorism coverage after the Sept. 11 attacks or have offered only costly and limited insurance. A recent U.S. report indicated that the lack of insurance is causing problems in some sectors of the economy (see GSN, Feb. 28).
Senate Republicans and Democrats have disagreed over whether to limit the ability of terrorism victims to file lawsuits.
In addition to internal Senate disagreements, any bill the Senate passes would have to be resolved with a bill the House of Representatives passed last year (see GSN, Nov. 30, 2001). The bills use different formulas to determine what amount of money the government would pay in the case of an attack.
The Senate bill would require insurance companies to pay part of the cost of an attack based on their market share. The government would then pay 80 percent of the remaining costs under $10 billion and 90 percent of an attack costing more than $10 billion, according to the Washington Post.
Under the House bill, insurance companies would have to pay the first $1 billion in costs, and the United States would pay 90 percent of costs above that.
“Even if we complete our work over here, there is a monumental amount of work to be done,” said Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), one of the authors of the Senate bill (Jackie Spinner, Washington Post, June 13).
Canadian customs agents at border crossings and ports will receive radiation detection devices by the middle of next month, according to the National Post. Canadian officers are working with U.S. agents to try to prevent dirty bombs or nuclear weapons from being smuggled into the United States (see GSN, March 26).
Authorities have been using handheld and lapel-style radiation detectors in certain areas of Canada for three months, Revenue Minister Elinor Caplan said.
“There are a number of weapons of mass destruction that emit radiation, so these electronic dosimeters are preset at a threshold which will cause the alarm to go off and alert people,” Caplan said (Robert Fife, National Post, June 13).
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The lower house of the Russian Parliament is scheduled to begin discussions on ratifying the new U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty tomorrow, according to Interfax (see GSN, June 7).
A document assessing the treaty, which the Russian State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee has prepared, will be presented to legislators, Interfax reported. The rapid creation of additional agreements on transparency and predictability of arms reductions will be vital to Russian ratification of the treaty, the document says. It also reiterates Russia’s opposition to the U.S. withdrawal of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (see related GSN story, today). The new arms reduction treaty, however, helps reduce the damage caused by the U.S. withdrawal, the document says.
Work continues on the document and some of the clauses may be altered before it is presented to the Duma, according to sources on the Foreign Affairs Committee (Interfax, June 10 in FBIS-SOV, June 10).
For further information, see:
Moscow Treaty Text (U.S. State Department)
Bush Announces Treaty
U.S. State Department Fact Sheet on Arms Reduction Treaty
Cleanup workers entered one of the most contaminated rooms in the United States yesterday at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado. The Energy Department sealed the room in the 1970s after nitric acid leaked out of vacuum pumps (see GSN, May 16).
Two workers for Kaiser-Hill Co., the contractor hired by the United States to clean up the plant, spent 30 minutes coating the room with a substance to keep the area wet — reducing the chance that contamination would be released into the air — and cleaning debris. The workers wore single-use protective suits costing $1,200 each and used an air pump to breathe.
The plant is scheduled to be cleaned and closed in 2006 (Associated Press, June 13).
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Sources familiar with the FBI’s “Amerithrax” investigation into last fall’s anthrax attacks have said the bureau is exploring the idea that the spores used in the attacks were grown inside the U.S. Army’s biological weapons defense research facility at Fort Detrick, Md., and then later removed for further processing, the Chicago Tribune reported today (see GSN, May 21).
A former government scientist who has been questioned by the FBI has said the agents’ questions dealt with how someone with access to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases could carry out such a plan. The FBI agents, however, did not say whether such an incident had occurred.
“They asked me: If I wanted to grow something I wasn’t supposed to, would there be somebody asking me about it and could I have taken it out of the lab?” said the scientist. “I told them no one checked, and it was far easier to get something out of Fort Detrick than into it” (Altimari/Dolan, Chicago Tribune, June 13).
A senior Cuban diplomatic official in Iran has said Cuba and Iran plan to increase biotechnological cooperation, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported Monday (see GSN, June 6).
Cuba is ready to cooperate with Iran in a wide range of areas, including biotechnology, said Jorje Hadad, first secretary of the Cuban Embassy in Tehran. Mutual biotechnological cooperation could improve the health standards of both countries, he said, adding that it could later lead to Cuba and Iran establishing pharmaceutical factories. It is important for Havana and Tehran to cooperate because of Cuba’s strategic position in Latin America and Iran’s strategic position in the Middle East, Hadad said (Islamic Republic News Agency, June 10).
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Activists and some U.S. legislators have said the Bush administration is moving too slowly to improve security at U.S. chemical plants, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, May 30).
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the chemical industry has implemented some new security measures at facilities, such as hiring more security guards, building new fences and reducing stockpiles of chlorine gas and other hazardous materials, the Post reported. There is still no federal security standard for chemical facilities, however, and no way to ensure that the chemical industry is increasing security, according to environmental and community groups.
“We need a vigorous federal program to reduce chemical hazards and improve site security,” said Paul Orum, director of the Working Group on Community Right to Know.
The chemical industry opposes new government regulations or legislation on facility security, the Post reported. New government action would only “slow down our efforts,” said Chris VandenHeuvel, spokesman for the American Chemistry Council (Eric Pianin, Washington Post, June 13).
EPA Proposes Plan
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose a plan that would require chemical facilities to submit to a terrorism vulnerability review, according to the Wall Street Journal. After a period of time following the review, chemical companies would then have to demonstrate that they had taken steps to improve security, but whether the EPA would have the power to mandate changes is still unknown, a senior EPA official said.
The EPA “expects to be able to make an announcement in the very near future ... the last thing anybody wants is for anything to be delayed or postponed” while Congress debates the creation of the new Homeland Security Department, the agency official said
The EPA plan is similar to an American Chemistry Council plan to require its members to determine which of their facilities is most vulnerable to terrorist attack. The EPA plan, however, would apply to 15 times as many facillities as the council plan, according to the Journal.
“We certainly hope that any EPA proposal doesn’t run counter to the president’s efforts to organize all security efforts under a single department,” a council spokesman said.
Justice Department Delays
The Justice Department has not commented on the EPA plan (Ann Davis, Wall Street Journal, June 13), spurring the Natural Resource Council and Democrats in Congress to criticize the department for delays in preparing an assessment of vulnerabilities of chemical plants and chemical transports, according to the Washington Post. Last week department officials sent Congress an interim report that details numerous security problems, but they will be unable to complete a final report by a congressionally mandated August deadline, according to sources.
“I find it very worrisome that the administration will not meet the August deadline,” Representative John Dingell (D-Mich.) said (Pianin, Washington Post).
Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber yesterday approved an emergency preparedness plan to protect residents if an accident occurs at the Umatilla Chemical Depot (see GSN, May 15).
The plan is a necessary step toward proceeding with test burns at the depot, where the U.S. Army plans to destroy 12 percent of the U.S. chemical weapons arsenal. The tests, using industrial chemicals instead of chemical weapons agents, are expected to begin in July, depot spokeswoman Mary Binder said. The Army is scheduled to begin destroying the weapons next year and complete the program by 2008.
Kitzhaber said the emergency plan he approved includes an elaborate evacuation route and warning system. The plan meets all requirements after failing most requirements in a 1999 evaluation, he said (Associated Press, June 13).
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Unless a U.S. federal court intervenes at the last minute (see GSN, June 12), the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty will take effect today, more than 30 years after the United States and Soviet Union signed the pact and exactly six months after U.S. President George W. Bush formally announced his intention to withdraw from it (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2001).
Construction workers and Pentagon officials are expected to mark the treaty’s end Saturday by breaking ground at a test site in Alaska for a U.S. national missile defense system (see GSN, May 15) previously banned by the treaty (Tom Raum, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, June 13).
In Russia, officials have considered the treaty a cornerstone of nuclear arms control and regretted the U.S. decision to scrap it, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said today.
Russia plans “to minimize the negative consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty,” Ivanov said. “Thanks to Russia’s efforts, the negotiating process on strategic offensive weapons and missile defense has not been terminated,” he added (Agence France-Presse, June 13).
Celebrating …
Some observers hailed the treaty’s demise as an opportunity to build a national missile defense system and move beyond Cold War strategy.
“Now we can finally develop the kind of robust missile defense program the ABM Treaty prohibited. We don’t have to limit ourselves to a single land-based site — or slow the speed of our interceptors, as we did for years — to avoid violating the agreement,” Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, wrote in the Washington Times.
“Most importantly, we don’t have to remain vulnerable in an increasingly dangerous world,” he added (Edwin Feulner, Washington Times, June 10).
“At last, the United States is free to accelerate its pursuit of a robust national missile defense system,” a Washington Times editorial said yesterday. “It must pursue this task in the face of rapidly proliferating threats from rogue states whose dictators are capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction via ballistic missiles aimed at the United States, its overseas military bases and its allies,” the editorial said, adding that the treaty’s end comes “not a minute too soon” (Washington Times, June 12).
… And Mourning
Critics expressed concern that the end of the treaty is unnecessary and will have negative consequences.
Several said the U.S. missile defense program is in such preliminary stages that abrogating the treaty is not worth any potential gains in missile defense at this time.
“Testing for this [missile defense] system could have continued without violating the ABM Treaty for several more years,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
“U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty does not increase the likelihood that the United States will soon deploy effective and reliable missile defense because the technology remains unproven and unreliable,” he said (Arms Control Association release, June 12).
The treaty has not been the main obstacle to implementing a national missile defense system, said David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“Technology remains the key barrier to building missile defenses that are effective against real-world attacks,” he said. Rather than taking time to resolve technical hurdles, the Bush administration “plans to rush immature defense systems into the field beginning in 2004,” Wright said. The preliminary systems will not provide any real capability to defend against threats and will provide “only the illusion of capability,” he said (Union of Concerned Scientists statement, June 12).
Some analysts also expressed concern that unilaterally withdrawing from the treaty might create future problems for nonproliferation and arms control.
“President Bush’s unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty sets a dangerous precedent,” said John Steinbruner, director of the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland. “If the United States chooses to abrogate formal international agreements in defiance of the legitimate objections of the other parties, they are encouraged to act in the same manner,” he added.
“The U.S. withdrawal reveals the Bush administration’s arrogant disdain for world opinion and its own commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). This will make it more difficult for the United States to exercise leadership in organizing the international community to implement nonproliferation measures, and it provides a dangerous precedent for non-nuclear-weapon states to reject their NPT commitments to forgo nuclear weapons,” said Spurgeon Keeny, former deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (Arms Control Association release).
While much has improved in terms of arms control in the last ten years, the demise of the ABM Treaty is part of an emerging negative trend, Rose Gottemoeller, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said yesterday. The U.S. withdrawal will not lead to the collapse of nuclear deterrence, but it might sow seeds that would lead to negative trends in nonproliferation and arms control in the future, she said.
Weak Protests
Contrary to some predictions, international protest to the U.S. withdrawal has generally been weak, said Joseph Cirincione, director of Carnegie’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Project and admittedly one of those who predicted such an outcry (see GSN, May 22). A primary reason for the lack of harsh criticism from world leaders is that the United States does not actually have a national missile defense and will not for at least a decade, he said.
Russia and other countries that might perceive a U.S. missile defense system as a threat have realized that a world without the ABM Treaty is not necessarily a world with U.S. missile defense, Cirincione said. If the United States develops a way to build a system within the next decade, other countries would have to time to respond before the United States could implement the system, he said.
Also, Bush announced the abrogation while the country was at war, and loyal allies did not want to criticize the United States in such a situation, Cirincione said (Kerry Boyd, GSN, June 12).
Feulner of the Heritage Foundation said Russian complaints have been fairly muted because “it was clear the treaty was as outdated and meaningless for Russia as it was for us.”
“Now, virtually no one in Russia believes we have or ever had any intention of launching a ‘first strike.’ And virtually all realize that the real threat for both countries comes from rogue regimes, such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq,” Feulner said (Feulner, Washington Times).
For further information, see:
ABM Treaty Text
U.S. Fact Sheet on Withdrawal from ABM Treaty
U.S. Defense Department Executive Summary
NPT Text
U.N. Background on NPT
Israel will eventually purchase the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missile if the United States agrees to sell the missile, an Israeli government official said Tuesday, although he said Israel has not yet requested the system or made firm plans to acquire it (see GSN, Feb. 25).
Israel has the PAC 2 system, but the PAC 3 would provide “another layer” of defense, the official said, according to Defense Daily.
Israel also needs more than the three Arrow missile defense batteries currently planned, the official said (see GSN, May 7). He would not say how many more batteries would be necessary to defend against future threats (Kerry Gildea, Defense Daily, June 12).
For further information, see:
PAC-3 Fact Sheet
MDA Terminal Defense Segment
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Jose Padilla, the U.S. citizen recently arrested for allegedly planning to detonate a “dirty bomb” within the United States, traveled to a Central Asian country in April to look for radioactive materials, Pakistani officials said today (see GSN, June 12).
It is believed that now-captured al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah ordered Padilla, also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, to investigate methods of causing “maximum damage to Americans,” Pakistani intelligence officials said. Pakistani officials said Padilla used fake documents to travel to an undisclosed Central Asian country. He returned to Pakistan in late April and then traveled to Switzerland and finally Chicago, where U.S. authorities arrested him, officials said.
At least two associates of Padilla have been arrested in Pakistan and FBI agents are questioning them, officials said. One of the captured men has been identified as Benjamin Ahmed Mohammed, according to the Associated Press. At least six U.S. citizens have been among the 300 al-Qaeda suspects turned over in the last six months to the United States by Pakistani authorities, officials said (Munir Ahmad, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, June 13).
Judge Upholds Detention
A U.S. federal judge yesterday allowed the United States to continue to detain Padilla on a “material witness” warrant, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Padilla’s attorney Donna Newman had argued that the prosecution’s case against Padilla is insufficient and that his constitutional rights are being violated.
“There is insufficient evidence for the government to obtain an indictment against Padilla,” Newman said in a habeas corpus petition filed yesterday requiring the government to justify the detention.
U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey, however, said he could not vacate the government’s material witness warrant against Padilla. Mukasey ruled that the prosecution has a deadline of June 21 to file a motion to dismiss Newman’s petition or to transfer it to another jurisdiction (Shelley Emling, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 13).
The United States has not decided what action it will take against Newman’s petition, U.S. Attorney James Comey said.
“There’s a lot of folks who need to be heard inside the government on what we’ll say about that,” he said.
Officials Debated Padilla’s Arrest
FBI agents had considered following Padilla to discover further accomplices instead of arresting him, officials said yesterday. After a series of deliberations in which FBI Director Robert Mueller also participated, authorities decided to arrest Padilla at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport upon his arrival from Switzerland, according to the New York Times. Officials have defended their approach to Padilla’s arrest, saying they were unsure whether Padilla had obtained a dirty bomb or might have tried a different form of attack.
“They couldn’t take a chance [so they decided] to pop him right as he got off the plane,” one official said.
Padilla’s arrest was significant in that it showed that the FBI and the CIA can carry out a successful preventive operation, several officials said. The Justice Department was eager to show off the arrest since the FBI has recently come under criticism by Congress for failing to detect clues in the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said (David Johnston, New York Times, June 13).
Skeptics
U.S. and European intelligence officials yesterday questioned the U.S. claims that Padilla was planning a radiological weapons attack. The evidence accumulated by the Bush administration so far is too little to make a strong case against Padilla, an FBI official said.
“What did we get? We got no bomb, no traces of a bomb,” the FBI official said. “This Padilla guy hadn’t even started on anything.”
A U.S. intelligence analyst criticized the timing of the announcement of Padilla’s arrest, saying it could have been done to help deflect criticism of the FBI and CIA.
“It’s a little too cute,” the analyst said. “If you’re asking me, it’s designed to thwart criticism, not terror” (Richard Sale, United Press International, June 12).
Administration Defends Action, Scolds Ashcroft
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer yesterday criticized suggestions that the announcement of Padilla’s arrest was done for political reasons, calling such claims “outlandish.”
“These very few people who want to make such an outlandish political accusation represent the most cynical among the most partisan, and they’re not to be taken seriously,” Fleischer said (Reuters/Boston Globe, June 13).
Some Bush administration officials, however, have rebuked Attorney General John Ashcroft for inflating the threat of the dirty bomb plot, the London Daily Telegraph reported today. U.S. officials have said that Ashcroft’s warnings about the potential threat were needlessly alarming (Toby Harnden, London Daily Telegraph, June 13).
Over the past five years, there have been several security lapses involving radioactive materials at U.S. universities, private companies and government agencies, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, June 12).
More than 54 cases of “elevated enforcement actions” related to industrial nuclear materials were recorded by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Violators in at least 16 of the cases were ordered to pay fines ranging from $2,500 to $15,000, according to the AP.
The U.S. Army was fined $8,000 for failing to properly secure radioactive materials at Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, AP reported. The NRC also found that a Defense Logistics Agency employee had stolen radioactive materials and that the Interior Department had suffered security lapses, though no fines were issued in either case.
The security violations either involved no loss of radioactive materials or the loss of an amount too small to be of use to terrorists, NRC officials said. They added, however, that they could not be sure no material had been diverted, since the tracking of radioactive materials is mainly left to private industry.
“The reality is it’s a very large volume of material that’s out in the community and I can’t give you any assurance that (some) material might not have been diverted by now,” NRC Chairman Richard Meserve said, adding that he is almost certain no large radiation sources have been stolen (Associated Press/New York Times, June 13).
A German court sentenced a man to 4 1/2 years in prison Tuesday for stealing radioactive materials from a nuclear plant he was helping to dismantle between January 1999 and March 2001.
The court convicted Joao Manuel Martins Albuquerque of stealing radioactive tags and a section of pipe containing radioactive liquid from the former Karlsruhe spent fuel reprocessing plant. The judge said there was “reason to suspect” Albuquerque was planning to use the materials to poison his girlfriend. Albuquerque said he took the materials to test the plant’s security.
German experts said the materials could not have been used to build a nuclear weapon (Associated Press/Yahoo.com, June 11).
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